A Problem to Ourselves? Robert Bales and the Astonishing Mixture of Virtue and Depravity

Holy Smokes! Talk about low-hanging fruit. Another unbelievable, doubletake-inducing column from David Brooks in the Times this morning, this time dealing with Robert Bales, “When the Good Do Bad,” in which he articulates the Mockingbird anthropology with remarkable accuracy (and courage), using none other than John Calvin, G.K. Chesteron and C.S. Lewis to back him up. Wild! I’m almost tempted to replace our glossary entry on “anthropology” with a link to this column. Is Brooks becoming the prophet of the age? The one compassionate voice crying in the wilderness of positive thinking and the American inflated sense of self, speaking up for all those that can’t transcend their limitations? The weak, the defeated, the addicted, the guilty, the accused, etc? It makes me increasingly sad when I read people dismissing him as representative of one ideological camp or the other, slagging him off as this or that (and they do this on all sides of the ideological equation). Sigh. But the disdain is revealing. His diagnosis will never be popular (especially if what he’s saying is true!), as it represents an attack on all our precious forms of self-justification (on conventional notions of ideology/progress, period), or at least a refusal to engage in the blame-shifting that characterizes the majority of our cultural and political discourse. It so clearly reaches deeper, and for that reason, who knows, it might be able to build some bridges. Bravo:

It’s always interesting to read the quotations of people who knew a mass murderer before he killed. They usually express complete bafflement that a person who seemed so kind and normal could do something so horrific. Friends of Robert Bales, who is accused of massacring 16 Afghan civilians, have expressed similar thoughts. Friends and teachers describe him as caring, gregarious and self-confident before he — in the vague metaphor of common usage — apparently “snapped.” As one childhood friend told The Times: “That’s not our Bobby. Something horrible, horrible had to happen to him.”

Any of us would be shocked if someone we knew and admired killed children. But these days it’s especially hard to think through these situations because of the worldview that prevails in our culture.

According to this view, most people are naturally good, because nature is good. The monstrosities of the world are caused by the few people (like Hitler or Idi Amin) who are fundamentally warped and evil. This worldview gives us an easy conscience, because we don’t have to contemplate the evil in ourselves. But when somebody who seems mostly good does something completely awful, we’re rendered mute or confused.

But of course it happens all the time. That’s because even people who contain reservoirs of compassion and neighborliness also possess a latent potential to commit murder.

David Buss of the University of Texas asked his students if they had ever thought seriously about killing someone, and if so, to write out their homicidal fantasies in an essay. He was astonished to find that 91 percent of the men and 84 percent of the women had detailed, vivid homicidal fantasies. He was even more astonished to learn how many steps some of his students had taken toward carrying them out.

These thoughts do not arise from playing violent video games, Buss argues. They occur because we are descended from creatures who killed to thrive and survive. We’re natural-born killers and the real question is not what makes people kill but what prevents them from doing so. [Ed. note: Mark 7:14-23]

In centuries past most people would have been less shocked by the homicidal eruptions of formerly good men. That’s because people in those centuries grew up with a worldview that put sinfulness at the center of the human personality. John Calvin believed that babies come out depraved (he was sort of right; the most violent stage of life is age 2). G. K. Chesterton wrote that the doctrine of original sin is the only part of Christian theology that can be proved.

This worldview held that people are a problem to themselves. The inner world is a battlefield between light and dark, and life is a struggle against the destructive forces inside. The worst thing you can do is, in a fit of pride, to imagine your insecurity comes from outside and to try to resolve it yourself. If you try to “fix” the other people who you think are responsible for your inner turmoil, you’ll end up trying to kill them, or maybe whole races of them.

This earlier worldview was both darker and brighter than the one prevailing today. It held, as C. S. Lewis put it, that there is no such thing as an ordinary person. Each person you sit next to on the bus is capable of extraordinary horrors and extraordinary heroism.

According to this older worldview, Robert Bales, like all of us, is a mixture of virtue and depravity. His job is to struggle daily to strengthen the good and resist the evil, policing small transgressions to prevent larger ones. If he didn’t do that, and if he was swept up in a whirlwind, then even a formerly good man is capable of monstrous acts that shock the soul and sear the brain.

Paul Walker preached a sermon about this very dynamic two weeks ago as it relates to the verdict recently handed down in the George Huguely murder case and the foolishness of grace:

I once was eager to throw these Huguely and Bales type events into their proper theological bins but no more. I have given up on all of that. No matter how we “process” them, for me I realized that the processing blunted the horror of it all, and that I had become too interesting in protecting and illustrating the correctness of my own theological position. Real love and real pain and real loss that is so much a part of life in this world was not in the picture for me in many ways. I didn’t really give a damn, not really, about either the victims or the perpetrators, except as illustrations for my argument. I’m not saying that this is the case here, or is the case with Paul Walker, I am just saying that now I just read Le Peste, hold on to Jesus’ words from the cross, and trudge along in a foggy mire, with no explanations or answers. Maybe that’s just another bin as well.

About

WHAT: Mockingbird seeks to connect the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life in fresh and down-to-earth ways.

WHY: Are we called Mockingbird? The name was inspired by the mockingbird’s peculiar gift for mimicking the cries of other birds. In a similar way, we seek to repeat the message we have heard - God’s word of grace and forgiveness.

HOW: Via every medium available! At present this includes (but is not limited to) a daily weblog, semi-annual conferences, and an ongoing publications initiative.

WHO: At present, we employ three full-time staff, David Zahl and Ethan Richardson and William McDavid. They are helped and supported by a large number of contributing volunteers and writers. Our board of directors is chaired by Mr. Thomas Becker.

WHERE: Our offices are located at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, VA.

WHEN: Mockingbird was incorporated in June 2007 and is currently in its seventh year of operation.

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